MPICH (p4mpd) trouble

Hello all,
New to MPI, I'm setting up mpich 1.2.4 on my x86 linux box (Redhat 8.0 ).
Using the mpd daemon sounds like the cleanest way to accomplish this, so I
did the following as perscribed in the manual:
./configure --with-device=ch_p4mpd --prefix=/usr/local/mpich-1.2.4
make
make install
I created a .mpd.conf under /root and used chmod -o to make it
inaccessible to other users (as required by mpd ).
I can manually start mpd without a problem, but I can't run the examples.
For example, if I do "mpirun -np 3 cpi" I immediately get the error "job 1
aborted with code0 by process 2, unable to execute program: cpi"
this happens with all examples I tried. If I use 5 processes, it would say
"job 1 aborted with code0 by process 4, unable to execute program: cpi"
Would anyone kindly enlighten me as to how I can get this working? I am
new to MPI and Linux, but I am eager to learn.
Thanks,
George Pantazopoulos